Organizations face procurement decisions on a recurring basis. Procurement is one component of the broader concept of sourcing and acquisition. In the general sense, procurement is the process of finding, agreeing to terms, and acquiring goods, services, or other works from one or more sources. Corporations and public bodies often define processes intended to promote fair and open competition for their business, while minimizing risk such as fraud and collusion. In the context of military acquisitions, Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) is a requirement that ensures at least three feasible alternatives are analyzed prior to making any major acquisition decision. An objective is to move away from employing a single acquisition source to the exploration of multiple alternatives so agencies have a basis for arriving at acquisition decisions in a rational and defensible manner considering risk and uncertainty. For a given decision, the AoA attempts to arrive at the best value for a set of proposals received from the private sector or other sources.
A proper AoA tends to require a workflow between assets being considered for an acquisition. Proper evaluation of an asset in a workflow requires exposing information regarding the asset or the asset otherwise interoperating with other assets in the workflow. The assets are provided by sources, such as contractors, academics, and other vendors, bidding on the acquisition. However, the assets being considered for an acquisition are commonly provided by multiple sources (asset providers) who are unwilling to share such data at the risk of exposing the asset to loss or other threats. Moreover, existing decision support tools do not provide the necessary protection of assets. As a result, decision methodologies tend to be informal and one-of-a-kind, and organizations faced with having to make acquisition decisions commonly resort to informal, ad-hoc evaluation methods, often using spreadsheets to evaluate the assets. To this end, safeguarding of assets and their information is paramount to a proper AoA and the evaluation of the assets in a workflow.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those in light of the present disclosure.